Monday, July 4, 2011

Pie!

Of all the things I despaired of never eating or cooking again I wasn't exactly worried about pie. Even with regular old wheat flour available to me I've never been much of a pie baker or eater, truth be told. I've just never gotten all that excited about pie.

But. But it's summer and there's tasty fruit everywhere and it's the Fourth of July and everyone seems to be talking pie so what to do? Once I read this post I got all fired up and decided I, too, could make a delicious gluten free pie.

I was in the mood for cherry but couldn't quite fork out $10 on an experiment so I used the remainder of last year's blueberries from the freezer, tossed with a bit of corn starch, cinnamon, and lemon zest.

Even with icy cold butter and less water than called for, my dough ended up really wet. I dusted it with white rice flour and used parchment to roll it out which worked pretty well. The dough is fragile and doesn't really want to hang together so the lattice top of my dream pie was replaced with pastry stars as they were a lot easier to move from counter to pie dish. I wasn't trying to be cute, just practical.

The result? Delicious! The crust baked up nicely and was very tasty though completely without the flakiness I associate with good pie. My husband was so happy to have pie and coffee that I think I may just have to do a little more pie baking. I might skip the food processor next time and use my old grated frozen butter trick to see if I can get some flakiness into the crust. But even if that doesn't work, I think there are more pies in my future as this really wasn't difficult, just fiddly, and my family was delighted with the results.